Oliver Jeffers!

I am obsessed with this man. Seriously.

Well, more so with his art... and writing... and how they get put together into amazing books for kids.

I only recently became acquainted with Oliver Jeffers via an interview I stumbled across on Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast. (Click and read! So interesting!)

After reading the interview, I had to experience his work for myself. So I scampered down to the bookstore on my very first free afternoon and greedily gobbled up every single book by him that was on the shelf. From the boy who ate books for breakfast (and lunch and dinner) (red ones were his favorite) to the journey of a little, lost penguin (who maybe wasn't so lost after all)... these books are fabulous.

When I read his latest, I found myself with a cryball in my throat, right in the middle of the children's section. The Heart and the Bottle is the story of a girl "whose head was filled with all the curiosities of the world." She is imaginative and wide-eyed and approaches the world with love and big questions... until she experiences a very sudden and tragic loss. At that point, the little girl decides that her heart would be much safer in a bottle around her neck. That way she could never be hurt again. But... then she wouldn't be able to feel anything else, either. The Heart and the Bottle tells how she learned to let her heart be free again. 

If you're already hungry to learn more about Oliver Jeffers, check out the video below! He talks you through the ideas behind each of his books and how his own artistic style has evolved over the course of their creation.